<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16735" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2>
<H1><IMG height=52 alt="" hspace=0
src="http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.0/logo/cnn.gif" width=229 vspace=1
border=0></H1>
<H1>Holocaust survivors to Mormons: Stop baptisms of dead Jews</H1>
<UL>
<LI class=cnnhiliteheader>Story Highlights</LI>
<LI>Holocaust survivors say they are through trying to negotiate with Mormon
church<BR></LI>
<LI>Church elder: Ending practice outright would be asking Mormons to alter
their beliefs<BR></LI>
<LI>Baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have ancestors baptized into
church<BR></LI>
<LI>Using genealogy records, church also baptizes the dead of other
religions<BR></LI></UL>
<P><B>NEW YORK (AP) </B>-- Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through
trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews
killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a
13-year-old agreement barring the practice.</P>
<P>Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are
making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more
difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by
proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a
century.</P>
<P>But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust
Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on
Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you
have done."</P>
<P>"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from
the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at
Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited
riots against Jews.</P>
<P>"We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion,"
Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. "We ask you to
leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered
enough."</P>
<P>Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have
ended. He said his group will not sue, and that "the only thing left, therefore,
is to turn to the court of public opinion."</P>
<P>In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that
allow for the proxy baptisms of <A class=cnninlinetopic
href="http://topics.cnn.com/topics/the_holocaust" target=_blank>Holocaust</A>
victims. Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would
essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B.
Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.</P>
<P>"We don't think any faith group has the right to ask another to change its
doctrines," Wickman said. "If our work for the dead is properly understood ...
it should not be a source of friction to anyone. It's merely a freewill
offering."</P>
<P>Michel's decision to unilaterally end discussion of the issue through a news
conference leaves the church uncertain about how to proceed, Wickman said.</P>
<P>Baptism by proxy allows faithful <A class=cnninlinetopic
href="http://topics.cnn.com/topics/the_church_of_jesus_christ_of_latter_day_saints"
target=_blank>Mormons</A> to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old
church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.</P>
<P>Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from
all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for
the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.</P>
<P>Only the Jews have an agreement with the church limiting who can be baptized,
though the agreement covers only Holocaust victims, not all Jewish people. Jews
are particularly offended by baptisms of Holocaust victims because they were
murdered specifically because of their religion.</P>
<P>Michel suggested that posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims play into the
hands of Holocaust deniers.</P>
<P>"They tell me, that my parents' Jewishness has not been altered but ... 100
years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of
blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other
reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of
the Holocaust?" Michel said Monday.</P>
<P>Wickman said the practice in no way impinges upon a person's "Jewishness, or
their ethnicity, or their background."</P>
<P>Under the agreement with the Holocaust group, Mormons could enter the names
of only those Holocaust victims to whom they were directly related. The church
also agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims already entered into its
massive genealogical database.</P>
<P>Church spokesman Otterson said the church kept its part of the agreement by
removing more than 260,000 names from the genealogical index.</P>
<P>But since 2005, ongoing monitoring of the database by an independent Salt
Lake City-based researcher shows both resubmissions and new entries of names of
Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews.</P>
<P>The researcher, Helen Radkey, who has done contract work for the Holocaust
group, said her research suggests that lists of Holocaust victims obtained from
camp and government records are being dumped into the database. She said she has
seen and recorded a sampling of several thousand entries that indicate baptisms
had been conducted for Holocaust victims as recently as July.</P>
<P>Wickman said lists of names have been entered into the database by a small
number of well-meaning members who were acting "outside of policy." He said that
church monitors have identified and removed 42,000 names from the database on
their own, and that the church welcomes research from others.</P>
<P>Church officials say a new version of the database, called New Family Search,
is being tested overseas and should reduce the problems. In the works for six
years, the new database will discourage the submission of large lists of
unrelated individuals. It will also separate names intended for temple rites
from those submitted purely for genealogical purposes, the church states in a
letter sent to Michel on Nov. 6.</P>
<P>"The names of any Holocaust victims we can identify in the database are to be
flagged with a special designation -- not available for temple ordinances," the
letter states.</P>
<P>The church also proposes jump-starting a monitoring committee formed in 2005
to review database entries. The committee has met just once since 2005.</P>
<P class=cnninline>In May, the Vatican ordered Catholic dioceses worldwide to
withhold member registries from Mormons so that Catholics could not be
baptized.</P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>